“Thanks.”
She nodded and turned to go.
“Michelle?” Becky spoke her name.
She turned back yet again. “Yes?”
“What you wrote—in the newspaper?”
“Yes?” She held her breath.
“That’s exactly how it feels. It almost seemed like…like you knew. If you do, I’m sorry.”
“Oh. No, I don’t—”
But this time it was Becky who turned and hurried away before she could answer.
She watched Becky trudge away, the sweet child’s arms wrapped about her neck. And stronger than pity, stronger than compassion, the emotion Michelle felt was envy.
Chapter 9
Rob spiraled the football harder than he intended, and it hit Doug Jensen’s open hand hard before bouncing onto the turf.
“Ouch! You trying to kill me, Merrick?”
“Sorry, man. Don’t know my own strength, I guess.”
The high school field was lush and green, and only because Bristol High was playing out of town later tonight had he and Doug been able to get onto the field. They’d come to jog on the asphalt track that circled the field, but Doug had found a scuffed football abandoned on the sidelines, and now they were horsing around, reliving their own glory days as small-town football stars. They’d played for rival teams, though, so there were as many good-natured barbs being tossed between them as pigskin passes.
He threw another too-hard pass. Doug caught the ball but held it, studying him from the twenty-yard line. “Something eating you?”
“No.” He waited for his buddy to lob the ball back and this time took care with his pass. “My old man’s on my case.”
“What did I tell you about moving back home?” Doug shook his head. “Not a good idea, man.”
“It’s only temporary. Till I find a place.”
Doug looked skeptical, but Rob didn’t try to defend himself. Dad’s house was plenty big. Rob had the whole second story to himself, and the two of them rarely bumped into each other once supper was over. It was the working hours that were the problem, and there was no office big enough.
Doug threw a nice spiral pass. “So what’s he on your case about?”
“A chick.” Rob caught the ball, then snapped it back.
“I should’ve known. Man, I told you the women would get you in trouble.”
He laughed. “You’re a good one to talk…since you went and married one.”
“Yeah, well, that’s different. Once you marry ’em, they’re fine.”
Rob grinned and nailed him with the ball.
“So what’s the problem?”
“There’s a girl at work I wouldn’t mind asking out. Dad says no way.”
“As in, ‘No way or you’re fired’?”
“Well, he hasn’t exactly said that. Probably more like, ‘No way or she’s fired.’ Or ‘No way or I’ll make your life miserable.’ ”
Doug cocked his head. “Is she worth it?”
“I wouldn’t be talking to you about it if she wasn’t.”
His friend let out a low whistle. “That says a lot, coming from you. Maybe you ought to let me take her off your hands.”
“Excuse me?” He shot Doug a look. “I doubt Denise would appreciate that.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot I was married, for a minute there.” His laugh turned to a wince. “I shouldn’t have said that. Not cool.”
“No regrets though, right?”
“Huh? About Denise?”
“About marriage.”
Doug didn’t hesitate. “Not one. Not ever.”
“So married life’s treating you okay, huh?”
“It’s good.” The way Doug grinned made Rob think it was very good.
Rob checked his watch. “I need to get home and shower. You sure you don’t want to ride to the game with me?”
“Wish I could, man, but I promised Denise I’d take her to a movie in Wichita tonight.” He wiped his palms on the grass and handed Rob the ball. “Here. Don’t say I never gave you anything. Have fun at the game.”
An idea popped into his head and began to germinate. “Maybe I will,” he muttered under his breath. “Just maybe.”
He ignored his buddy’s quizzical look and jogged to his car. He had to act fast if he was going to pull this off.
* * *
The phone was ringing when Michelle unlocked the door to her apartment. She dove over the back of the sofa to grab the receiver then nearly strangled herself, trying to make the cord reach. “Hello?”
“Michelle, it’s Rob.”
“Yes?” Against her best efforts to stop it, her voice trembled a little. He’d better not be asking her to come in to work when he’d cut out of work early this afternoon—as he had every Friday since she’d started working at the Beacon.
“Listen, I’m covering the game tonight—the Bears are playing over in Pretty Prairie—and I wondered if you’d want to come along. To help out, I mean. I need to take photos, and I could use some help keeping stats and hauling equipment.”
“Tonight?”
“Um, yes, tonight. If you’d read a little newspaper called the Beacon, you’d know that Friday night is when the football games are usually played around here.”
She mimicked his sarcasm. “And if you ever conversed with your employees, you’d know that Friday night is when I wash my hair.”
His silence told her that either he was laughing so hard it rendered him speechless or he thought she was serious.
“You know I’m kidding, right?”
“Oh. I thought—”
“I only wash my hair the first Friday of the month. Lucky for you, that was last Friday, so I suppose I could come with you.” If the phone cord would have reached, she would already be in her closet deciding what to wear.
“Oh. Okay, then.”
“You sound surprised.”
“Well, I thought—”
“This is for work, right? Strictly professional?”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
“Well, then, I don’t see a problem.”
“Great. Can you be ready by five thirty?”
She untangled the cord and picked up the phone, carrying it around the corner into the kitchen. The clock on the stove said it was already almost five. “That’s cutting it pretty close, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Okay, great. See you then.”
She slammed down the phone and raced down the hall to her bedroom. Thank goodness she’d done all her ironing last night and her favorite hip-hugger jeans were fresh out of the dryer. She dressed in record time and was waiting in front of her apartment when his car pulled into the lot.
He reached across the front seat and opened her door. “Hi there. Ready for the big game?”
She made a face. “Ready as I’ll ever be. You are aware, aren’t you, that I know next to nothing about football?”
“Not a problem. I can teach you as we go.” He looked down at her feet. “Are those comfortable shoes? We’ll be on the sidelines all night.”
“You mean, like, down on the field?”
“Yep.”
“Hang on. Maybe I’d better change into tennies.”
“Okay. I’ll wait.”
She jumped out of the car, charged into the house, and changed into tennis shoes. It wasn’t the look she’d really wanted for tonight, but it would have to do. Back in the car, she tucked her purse between them on the seat and checked to make sure she had her notebook and pen. “Okay. Ready.”
Rob headed out of town, tuning the radio to KGRV. Karen Carpenter’s mellow voice filled the air, a new song the radio had been playing ten times a day by listeners’ requests. “We’ve only just begun…” crooned the rich alto voice. Michelle sang along under her breath. Something about the song—and the crisp autumn evening, and the cute guy in the driver’s seat beside her—made her feel happy. And hopeful. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this way.
Well, yes…
she could. She felt her happy mood dissipate as she realized that this whole night was uncannily like the last time she and Kevin had been together. Kevin Ferris was the last person she wanted to think about tonight. Wasn’t it enough that every morning she still woke up and said a quick prayer for his safety while he was in Nam? And every morning, she disciplined herself to let that prayer be her last thought of Kevin for the day.
Because he had made his feelings clear…he didn’t want her waiting for him. He didn’t feel any commitment to her. “I don’t even know if I’ll come back,” he’d told her the night they broke up. “We’ve had a good run, babe, but it’s time to go our separate ways. I don’t want you waiting for me.”
“What if I want to wait for you? Can I write you?”
Kevin had looked at the floor of her front porch where they’d stood together for the last time. And when he looked up again, she somehow knew. He wasn’t breaking up for her sake. He wanted out.
She still got a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach when she let herself think about it. It was pretty bad when your boyfriend would rather go to Vietnam than marry you.
“Sorry to interrupt your concert…” Rob’s voice canceled her trip down memory lane.
She clapped a hand over her mouth, thoroughly embarrassed to realize her sing-along had grown loud enough for him to hear. “Sorry…”
“No, you’ve got a great voice. For a minute, I thought I had Karen Carpenter right here in the car with me.”
She rolled her eyes, blushing.
Rob seemed not to notice. He pointed through the windshield at an expansive grain elevator. The Hutchinson landmark loomed in the distance. “I just needed to ask whether you want to stop up here and grab something to eat on the way. There’ll be a concession stand at the game, but there’s a Dairy Queen in Hutchinson, and frankly, I’d prefer that to a soggy hot dog.”
“Sure. That’d be fine.” She quickly calculated whether she had enough money to buy a burger and get into the stadium too. Rob ought to pay her way at the game since this was work-related, but just in case, she’d order light.
“Okay”—Rob turned the radio up—“carry on with the concert.”
She laughed but decided it might be awkward to join Stevie Wonder singing “Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours.” But when “Hitchin’ a Ride” came on next, she was back “in concert” and amused to realize that she was, indeed, hitchin’ a ride with Rob Merrick.
Maybe he was just being polite, but she silently soaked up Rob’s offhand compliment about her voice. She didn’t know how great her voice was, but she did love to sing, and she did a pretty fair Karen Carpenter imitation. Besides, she couldn’t seem to help singing along. That was half the fun of listening to the radio.
They’d just passed the sign that said Hutchinson was the next exit when the car lurched and began to rumble as if they’d hit one of those country roads her dad dubbed Washboard Lane.
Rob hit the brakes and grabbed the steering wheel with both hands. “Uh-oh.” He coasted to the side of the road and crept along the shoulder until they were halfway down the exit ramp.
Chapter 10
Michelle stood beside Rob on the shoulder of the off-ramp, staring at the rear tire on the driver’s side. Or what used to be a tire. Now it was a puddle of rubber and tattered tread.
She frowned. “We must have run over a nail.”
“Yep.” He looked at his watch and ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up in an Elvis Presley pompadour. “We’ll have to walk into town and call somebody.”
“What do you mean, we? You have a frog in your pocket?”
“Oh. Right. You’ll have to walk into town and call somebody. I’ll stay here and guard the car.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “Ha ha. Very funny.”
“Okay…I’ll go.”
She studied him, trying to figure out whether he was still joking around. He didn’t look like it. “Why don’t you just change the tire?”
“You know how?”
She stared at him. “Of course I know how. You don’t?” She opened her car door.
“I seem to remember I had to change one to pass driver’s ed, but that was almost ten years ago. I don’t think I’d remember if my life depended on it.”
“Come on, I’ll show you. Set the emergency brake, okay?” She motioned for him to follow her.
“You seriously remember how to change a flat tire?”
“You forget, I’m a farm girl.”
“Oh, right. The ol’ farm-girl thing.” But the look he gave her said he was impressed.
He opened the trunk, and they unearthed the spare tire from under a mountain of sports equipment. “Good grief. You could open a YMCA with all this stuff.”
“I was a Boy Scout. Our motto is ‘Be prepared.’ ” He gave her a three-fingered salute.
“ ‘Be prepared’? Are you kidding?” She propped a hand on her hip. “Prepared to organize a football game or a tennis match, maybe. Not to change a flat tire.”
He looked at the asphalt, obviously trying to appear sheepish. “Okay, tell me what to do.”
She grabbed the jack and tire iron, popped off the hubcap, and handed the tire iron to him. “Loosen those lug nuts and I’ll get it jacked up.”
He looked at her like she was kidding.
“What’s wrong? You’ve never seen a woman who knew how to work a jack?”
“Um”—he puffed out one cheek with his tongue—“I’ve never seen a lug nut. At least not that I know of.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Sadly, not kidding. I assume it would be these little screw thingamajigs?” He tapped a lug nut with the wrong end of the tire iron.
She stared at him, incredulous. “Were you born in a cave?”
“Were you born in a barn?” he shot back.
“Hey, don’t make fun. I’m proud to be a farmer’s daugh—”
“No, not that…” He looked past her, pointedly eyeing the passenger door, which she’d left hanging open.
“Oh.” She dropped the jack near the rear tire, walked around the back of the car, and gave the door a shove. “There. You happy?”
He looked at his watch. “I’ll be happy when we’re standing on the sideline, getting our story. How do you do this, anyway?”
She took the tire iron from him, fit the wrench end on the first lug nut, and gave it a crank. “Like that. You get those loosened, and I’m going to find something to block the tire with.”
Heat radiated off the highway as she searched the side of the road for a rock large enough to serve as a block. A few yards down the exit ramp she found a couple of hunks of asphalt that would work. She lugged them back to the car and wedged them behind the rear tire.
On the other side of the car, Rob was huffing and grunting as if he were single-handedly lifting the car.
“You finished with that yet, Mr. Handyman?”
Still squatting beside the tire, he wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “No, I’m not finished. Those things are on there tight.”
She knelt beside him. “Let me see.”
He gave the lug wrench another crank.
“Well, no wonder, Einstein. You’re turning it the wrong way. They unscrew counterclockwise.”
He shot her a look. “You might have mentioned that before I got them all tightened.”
She manhandled the lug wrench to no avail. “Great. Now you have them so torqued I can’t get them off.”
“Here”—he took the wrench back from her—“let me try.”
He turned the opposite way and easily loosened the first lug nut. He turned to her as if he’d just climbed Mount Everest.
“Oh, yeah. Take all the credit now.”
He chuckled, but when he checked his watch again, he frowned. “They’re probably kicking off right about now.”
“It’s not like you’re going to get fired if you miss a few minutes of the game.”
“Don’t be so sure,” he huffed.<
br />
She couldn’t tell whether he was serious or not but decided it would be best not to broach the subject right now.
She talked him through changing the rest of the tire and stood watching while he did the muscle work. He looked up at her from his position on the side of the road. “Don’t work too hard there.”
“You’re doing fine. Besides, you’ll thank me someday for your newfound skill. I’d hate for you to be stranded next time you have a flat.”
He only snorted in reply.
Ten minutes later they were crawling down the exit ramp on the spare tire. Rob turned on his left blinker as if heading back onto the highway.
“Hey, what about that Dairy Queen?” She pointed back toward town.
“We don’t have time. We’re going to miss the first quarter as it is.”
She watched the exit sail by outside her window. “That’s really not very nice, you know. My mouth was watering.”
He shrugged, intent on the road.
“You’d better stop on the way home,” she said, pouting.
“Oh, you poor baby.”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not making fun of you. I’m saying you might be a little spoiled.”
“Me, spoiled? You’re the one who’s spoiled.” She was teasing, trying to get a rise out of him, but he’d mentioned that he was an only child and she had a feeling the spoiled label wasn’t far from the truth. “I bet you had your mama wrapped around your little finger.”
“Are you going to talk all the way to the game?” His expression said he was joking, but he kept his eyes trained on the road, and she sensed she’d hit a sore spot.
Feeling strangely chided she worked to keep her tone light. “Sorry. I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
He turned up the radio, and Diana Ross’s smooth vocals buttered the space between them. “How about you make yourself useful and serenade me.”
“Huh-uh. I can’t sing on command.”
“You were doing fine a few minutes ago. Just pretend I’m not here.”
“Then who’s driving the car?”
“Real funny. Come on. Don’t be shy. You know you’re dying to belt it out.” He reached for thin air and pulled down a convincing, though invisible, “microphone.” He leaned toward her, singing into his fist in a tone she knew was meant to mimic her. “Ain’t no mountain high enough…”
Silver Bells Page 6
